Take 2. FRIDAY'S GUIDE TO MOVIES & MUSIC. Play on.

Not A Role Model

There is no need to wind up Al Jourgensen when he calls. He is ticked off, he is happy, he is clean and sober, he has the worn-out liver of a man twice his age, he still likes a good party, he doesn't go out much any more, he hates talking to the press, he is now talking to a member of the press.

Only one thing is certain: Jourgensen and Ministry will play the Aragon on Monday and Tuesday, and the music will be brutal. Life may be hard, but Ministry must be harder, louder and, most important, larger than life.

Last autumn, Jourgensen consented to his first interviews in years and the subsequent profiles focused less on the scorched-earth music on the new Ministry album, "Filth Pig," but on the personal -- a rehashing of Jourgensen's 1995 arrest and conviction in Texas on drug possession charges (he got probation and a fine) and the personal toll exacted by the overdose deaths of some close friends.

Jourgensen now says if he had to do it all over again, he'd keep his mouth shut. "I'm envious of people that can handle the press. No matter what I say or how articulately I say it, it always comes back to the same issues. And it's getting kind of old."

Jourgensen became a celebrity by publicly proclaiming his death-defying addictions to drugs and alcohol, so it's difficult to feel sorry for him now that that reputation has become a burden. But when addressing his personal habits, Jourgensen's attitude has never wavered. He is the first to say he has used drugs and alcohol, and the first to say he is killing himself with them. It is not a lifestyle he recommends.

"It (drug use) works for me, but it may not work for others," he says. "At times it doesn't work for me, and I have to stop. My attitude has always been, if you're not hurting anyone else, what the (expletive)? I don't promote debauchery, alcoholism, drug use or whatever, but I'm not preaching against them either. In Ministry, we've only had one message: Think for yourself.

"People want to hear sound bites toeing the party line, they want role models. And I'm asking, Why would anyone want to be like me? I'm 38 with the liver of a 70-year-old."

Jourgensen is whip-smart and engaging in conversation, but his attitude toward the press and even Ministry's fans is tinged by wariness and even contempt. He laughs about spending a career on stage in which he is routinely showered with spit, bottles and trash, a crowd reaction that goes hand in hand with music underlined by its viciousness, its utter lack of compassion.

"I'm the world's biggest baby-sitter up there," Jourgensen says. "The first 10 rows are these kids who think it's cool to pelt me with stuff, the kids with the five-pronged hair bobbing like dorsal fins in the pit. Ian (MacKaye of Fugazi) likes to stop shows and educate the kids, but I would just as soon keep them occupied. I treat them like sharks who have to swim to live. Keep the show moving and they have no time to throw things at you."

Besides its breathless pace, the Ministry concert experience is characterized by its outrageous volume. Jourgensen says the stage monitors alone are blasting back at the band at 127 decibels. At the Aragon he concedes "that everything sounds like crap -- this just will be louder crap than everyone else's. But the circus ambiance will be great."

- The voice of Larry Hoover, a Chicago gang leader serving a 150-year prison term for a 1973 murder, has been heard on tape in recent weeks in federal court, still apparently very much in charge of the drug trade in his old South Side neighborhood even though he is behind bars. It is also heard on the new album by Houston hip-hoppers the Geto Boys, "The Resurrection" (Rap-A-Lot), on which the gang leader urges blacks to demonstrate their power not with bullets but with ballots.

"Real gangstas go to the polls," Hoover is heard saying. "These young brothers, they pay attention to what I say because I'm one of them, I understand where they been, I come from where they come from . . . (and) I'm where they're going to if they don't watch what they're doing."

The Hoover heard in court tapes is a '90s Al Capone. The Hoover heard on the Geto Boys album is described by the group as a political prisoner delivering an urgent wakeup call to the black community. It's enough to send the local news media into reflexive rap-bashing mode, and already local TV newscasts and at least one prominent local columnist have assailed the Geto Boys for their alliance with Hoover. If there's a larger message in all this -- and there is -- it wasn't apparent from these death-of-Western-Civilization-is-upon-us reports.

This rather predictable reaction also plays into the Geto Boys' hands -- the group specializes in shock effects to bring notice to its music, which otherwise would be ignored by the mainstream media. In the past, the group's songs have glorified ghetto pathology while offering a smattering of compassion and insight, particularly in the hip-hop masterpiece "Mind Playing Tricks on Me."